Moving - Stage 4

This stage of our moving process involved (1) cleaning our temporary ETH residence in Zurich, (2) packing, (3) staying New Year's Eve night with our friends Kai and Vanessa, and (4) then flying off to New York on Jan 1.

(1) We learned a couple of things from our cleaning ordeal in Egg and had decided that we would clean the best we could but would not try to stress excessively and spend a lot of time on it since it seemed like no matter what we did if they wanted to say it wasn't clean, they would. We pre-cleaned everything we could before New Year's Eve, and we also ironed all sheets which was required of us. Have you ever ironed and folded a fitted sheet before? We have. And we had to watch a youtube video to learn how to do it :). Our friends Kai and Vanessa took Carsten for the morning of the 31st so we could finish cleaning the flat and this was a HUGE help (thanks Kai and Vanessa!). Andy and I even managed to get everything done earlier than we had planned out which was a nice way to reduce our stress levels. I went over to Kai and Vanessa's after we finished cleaning in the morning to put Carsten down for a nap at their home since we'd be spending the night with them. Andy then spent the majority of the afternoon dropping off items that we had borrowed and ferrying our luggage to Kai and Vanessa's. This was a much better approach to cleaning, and in the end our landlords said that we did a great job - phew! :)

Ironed and folded fitted sheets. Hopefully won't have to do this again :).

Bye bye December housing!

2) Packing is always a long process, especially when you have to follow airline weight and size requirements. Our airline, Air Berlin, required very light (13 lbs) carryons; even though we have really light luggage this basically meant the only thing in our luggage was a change of clothes for everyone. We ended up checking an extra bag than we had planned, but luckily since we had booked before they upped their fees (and our friend Kai convinced them they should honor that when we checked in) we didn't end up paying too much for it. Once again, I tried to pack as much in advance as what I could (it's a trick when you still need to live out of stuff for another two nights) before New Year's Eve when we moved out of our temporary housing. We ended up with 5 checked bags, 1 carryon (plus a bag for each of us), 1 car seat, 1 travel crib that we got to check for free, and 1 stroller. Yes it sounds like a lot of stuff, but we had needed to keep that much to live with for December & for when we arrived in New York in January. Anyway, I'm relieved that I don't have to pack for anything like that any time in the future because it was NOT fun.

It's all packed!

For some reason Carsten really wanted to be buckled into his car seat to play. We were fine with that :).

(3) Our friends Kai and Vanessa graciously hosted us yet again for another evening while we were homeless, and while we didn't stay up to greet New Year's Day, we enjoyed spending time with our friends on New Year's Eve. We will miss all of them very much, and hope to see them again down the road in the US or in Switzerland. Carsten had a blast playing with Eleanor and I know I will miss getting to see them play together. Carsten actually asked to see Eleanor several times during our first week here in New York, and he was quite sad when we told him he was too far away to see her. We will miss you friends!

Eleanor and Carsten playing the piano.

(4) Kai took us to the airport and amazingly, all of our luggage fit in his car along with us! Truly an amazing pack job. We are so grateful that Kai was willing to drive us and to help us get all of our bags checked. Thanks Kai!

We're all packed in!

We went through security without a hitch and spent the few remaining minutes playing with Carsten by our gate. We had two legs of our journey, the first which took us to Dusseldorf (DE) and was a short flight. I should mention at this point that Carsten (as well as Andy and I) was up from about 3:30 am  that morning for whatever reason and really didn't go back to bed despite our attempts to do so. So, an already long day got even longer. Carsten took a 45 min on our first 1 hr flight, which was nice at the time, but it did mean that he didn't take a nap on the 9 hr flight until the very last 30 minutes despite our best efforts (sigh.). The trans-Atlantic flight seemed never ending and even though we had two of us on Carsten, we were all pretty frazzled by the time we arrived in JFK. Note to self: the TVs in the seatbacks are too exciting for my son and keep him awake when he should be sleeping. Luckily, we were able to walk right through immigration which is the FIRST time that has ever happened. It normally takes us 1-2 hrs of standing in line to make it through so we were so grateful that we didn't have to do that at the end of an already seemingly endless day. And with another bit of good luck, all our bags arrived and we got to go get our rental car without too much of a hassle. We ended up opting to upgrade to a bigger rental car than we had previously planned, but we're grateful that we did so we could have a comfortable ride up to Schenectady the next day. We then drove to our hotel where we got some food and then proceeded to pass out from 7 pm until midnight (6 am Swiss time) when Carsten woke us up. We got Carsten to sleep off an on until about 4 am, and then since we were all awake, we packed up our car and drove out of NYC while traffic was low. So, we started the new year of 2013 in Switzerland and then promptly left to go to the good old USA :).

Moving to NY!

All of our stuff fit on two luggage carts - barely :).